Ever want to know what key combinations generate what symbols on the Mac? Now you can know with this easy tip.
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hey everyone today I'm going to show you
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how you can easily figure out which key
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combinations give you what symbols on
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the Mac now if you remember back if you
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ever used Mac OS 9 you'll remember that
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there is a application called keycaps
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and what it did was it showed you a
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keyboard and whenever you pressed a
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modifier key like option or something
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like that it shows you what keys or what
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symbols you would get when you pressed a
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certain key in coordination with that
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modifier key now with Mac OS 10 that
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application is gone but there is still a
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way uh that you can figure out which key
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combinations are going to give you what
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symbols without having to download any
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software or anything it's still built
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into the OS it's just more hidden so to
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find it you're first going to need to go
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up to your Apple logo menu and click
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system
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preferences now once you're in system
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preferences you can just click on the
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keyboard
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Tab and right here towards the bottom on
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the keyboard tab inside the keyboard tab
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you'll see a checkbox that says show
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keyboard and character viewer in menu
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bar so if you click that you're going to
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see this thing pop up in your menu bar
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up here and uh it's right here by my
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clock and you get two options show
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character viewer or show keyboard viewer
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now what you can do here is if you click
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show character viewer it's going to open
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up this little box here and what you'll
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see here is all the different characters
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that you can get by pressing certain
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combinations on your keyboard
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so without having to actually press the
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key combination you can get these
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symbols here and then there's a button
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right here where you can insert them
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right into your
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document now while this can be handy and
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there's a lot of different symbols here
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that you can insert um it's not always
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the easiest thing to do it can be a
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little bit cumbersome and always have
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that window open if you're typing
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something up not probably the best
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option so what you can do instead is you
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can click show keyboard viewer and
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what's going to happen here is you're
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going to see a virtual keyboard pop up
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on the screen now what'll happen with
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this is it's just like keycaps if you
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remember Mac OS 9 so once I'm on the
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keyboard here I can press option and you
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can see right here that I have option um
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select and it shows it and then right
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here you'll see all the different things
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that
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will correspond to it so if I press
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option Q I will get that little symbol
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there I'm not actually quite sure what
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that's called um so you can see how that
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works and also with option shift you'll
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see more so option shift K you get an
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Apple logo just kind of a interesting
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things and this makes it a little bit
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easier if you know you have a certain
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symbol that you often use you can just
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see what the combination is for here and
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then you can memorize what you have to
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press for that without having to go
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through the hassle of looking at that
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character viewer and inserting
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characters through
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there now I have text that it open here
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and of course you can type with this
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virtual keyboard you can see I'm typing
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here um and you can insert your symbols
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this way too so copyright all different
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things like that um but you
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know it's probably easier once you
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realize what Comin you want just to be
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able to type them in on your own so now
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I know that option shift K is an Apple
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logo and if I often use that symbol now
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I know how to get it so it's an easy way
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to show you what symbols you're going to
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get with different things and without
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you know guessing uh what I did before I
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knew about this is and I just held on
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option and I I pressed different keys
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until I found the symol I wanted but
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this is a lot easier way to figure that
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out and it's just a handy tip it's
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hidden the system so I'm guessing a lot
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of people didn't know about
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this and if you work with characters a
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lot this can really save you some time
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so hope you found this video useful
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thank you for watching
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